scrotum wrote:Interesting that GoPro makes its founder a billionaire, while Contour can't even stay in business. I think Contour did a better i.d. job, but GoPro's marketing strategy was a lesson in how to go after the intended target market.

I think GoPro is one of the best modern-era case studies of how to market and succeed in your product design based business. Kinda shows that everything doesn`t have to be social media app based now to be succesful, there`s still hope for industrial design

* it also proves the importance of sales&marketing vs. the more perfect design (in the GrPro vs. Contour case).

Mr-914 wrote:Perhaps the product adoption curve has shrunk around tech.

I think there is room for meaningful tech. I'm sorry, but Fitbit and GoPro are at best a temporary distraction and most definitely not meaningful.

Agreed. Hype > Actual use case.

Fitbit activity monitor sounds like a cool thing. Reality though is that if you are already active, you don't need a plastic bracelet to tell you to walk or if you walked 10,000 steps. If you aren't active, a fitbit won't make you be active. Sure you might want to do a bit more/less, but it's not the life changing device that people had in mind when they got caught up with the media hype of a "connected/smart/IoT" lifestyle.

Richard: I think the problem with Go Pro and Fitbit is limited market size. Once those markets have bought the product, there is no reason to make another purchase for 3-5 years until the tech gets substantially better (memory, speed, resolution, inter-connectivity, etc) or the first one breaks. Both these companies saturated their market so fast that they ran out of customers before they got to that replacement wave.

That and competitors are moving into the space. Garmin has coming at fitbit pretty hard with more features and great accuracy, and their are a host of GoPro competitors that do it just as well for a better price. I think both brands has really established themselves in the space but they need to keep the pedal down and continue to advance to stay on top.

Mr-914 wrote:Once those markets have bought the product, there is no reason to make another purchase for 3-5 years until the tech gets substantially better.

I have a Hero 4 Black that I purchased a few years ago for mountain biking and diving, and I completely agree with this. It's a huge amount of money to spend to update to a new product that isn't substantially better. I think that they would be better off focussing on the smaller session cameras and providing a range of shell accessories to change the form factor for different activities. I.e on my downhill bike I'd prefer a more elongated camera attached to the side of my helmet than a bulky square box hanging out of my visor ( as it has been ripped off on branches and various crashes).

Mr-914 wrote:Once those markets have bought the product, there is no reason to make another purchase for 3-5 years until the tech gets substantially better.

I have a Hero 4 Black that I purchased a few years ago for mountain biking and diving, and I completely agree with this. It's a huge amount of money to spend to update to a new product that isn't substantially better. I think that they would be better off focussing on the smaller session cameras and providing a range of shell accessories to change the form factor for different activities. I.e on my downhill bike I'd prefer a more elongated camera attached to the side of my helmet than a bulky square box hanging out of my visor ( as it has been ripped off on branches and various crashes).

Andy - how are GoPro with software, and updates to their software or what you can do with the cameras? I've heard reviews of the Session being somewhat limited in that there's just a simple on-off button. Not sure if GoPro has a razor-blade type business model that lets them keep getting $ for subscriptions or updates to UI or image/digital functionality. I still want one though.

GoPro give you firmware updates to the cameras for free, so there's no ongoing cost after purchase except for different mounts. The editing software is included with the camera and auto detects/asks if you want to update. It's ideal for a quick video edit or export, but is by no means a pro level editing program.

I've only played with the session camera for a few moments. You can change the settings using the app on your phone, but I don't think that there are buttons to do it on the actual camera, which I can see being super annoying if you want to quickly switch between photo and video. An advantage of the bigger version I have is that I can change modes and make any tweaks to the video settings (resolution, ISO, frame rate etc) on the camera itself.